Secular Charlotte Mason

After hearing that this was a childhood favorite of mine my 8 yo wanted to read this book together.  As we are already doing a couple of other read alouds I decided to scrounge up our audio version.  Boy am I glad I did!!! This is one of those books that is best heard rather than read silently I am discovering.  It is so much more fun to hear the drama of Anne's antics and then hear the dry calm retorts of Marilla's responses.  You just can't get the full effect reading it silently (little did I know what I was missing as a child). The version we have, read aloud by Barbara Caruso and published by Recorded Books, is particularly well done in our opinion.  The other advantage of our using an audio version in the car is that I have a captive audience so my older two children are also sharing the story with us.  With one of my children this is about the only way I get quality literature into her head. My teenage son is finding himself surprisingly amused by the story and we often find ourselves sitting in the driveway listening until the end of the chapter.  Something my older kids hardly ever do. Tomorrow we will treat ourselves with watching the first half of the Anne of Green Gables movie which I happen to still have from my childhood. We will finish the last half of the movie when we finish the book. I'm not sure if we will actually read all 6 books in the series but we do have the next 3 so I am sure my 8 yo will read at least those although I doubt my other kids will choose to do so. But then again my son may surprise me as his comment at the end of chapter 16 was, "That was hilarious.  Someone should write a sequel to this book.", at which point I informed him there already was.

No where in the book can I find a date as to when the story was suppose to have taken place but it was published in 1907 so I am assuming that it takes place in the late 1800s to early 1900s.  That makes it a good history companion to other series like the Birchbark House books by Louise Erdrich and the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. All of which I think are excellent candidates for a CM education.  I think when we are all done reading books from the three series I will have my daughter do some sort of comparison of the three books or of the lives of the three main characters. It will be interesting to see how they are similar and how they are different. My daughter isn't into doing follow up activities with these particular books so I have very little to post about that. I think we may do one small meal of foods from each story but that will be all. I have no idea what foods we would do for Anne of Green Gables. Guess I'll have to post that at a later date.

I read this last summer.  Somehow I missed it when I was reading everything I could find as a girl. I loved it.

We listen to a lot of books on CD when traveling. Recently I listened to The Wind in the Willows, another book I missed as a kid.

Ruth in NC

Hi Ruth,

I really should look for The Wind in the Willows on audio. Somehow we just never get around to reading that one but I am certain my youngest would really enjoy it.

I have to admit that I am quite surprised by how much my teen son has enjoyed listening to Anne of Green Gables. Whenever the kids have a hard day following the rules they tease each other about which of them is the most like Anne Shirley lol.

Gina

Did you all know that Ms. Montgomery also wrote a series about a girl named Emily?  I can't help but wonder if it is as good as the Anne books (I am currently on book 3 and Kody Girl is nearly done with book 2 now). I have to admit that I have never heard of books by her other than the Anne books. Hmmm.....we may have to search out the first of the Emily books and see what they are about. 

I have to admit that I have never read these books, but the movies are amongst my all-time favorites.  I have the entire set (when Anne and Gilbert are in the war and them coming back to Avonlea) - love it, love it, love it!

Her books about Emily were a series on TV in Canada for a couple of years - it was called Emily of New Moon, but I could never get into it.

I will have to pick up and read these books - our dd (5.5) would love them - I'm sure she was born in the wrong era - she would fit right in to the late 1800's/early 1900's.